CM for fixing water woes thru RO plants

KARACHI – Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that the rural areas of Karachi are deprived of basic facilities such as potable water, electricity and basic social utilities, therefore the government has decided to provide drinking water to the underdeveloped areas through RO Plants.

Reverse Osmosis (RO) is a water purification technology that uses a semipermeable membrane to remove ions, molecules, and larger particles from drinking water.

This he said while presiding over a meeting on RO plants and their performance here at the CM House on Thursday. Those who attended the meeting include provincial ministers, Fayaz Butt, Mohammad Ali Malkani, Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput, Commissioner Karachi Ramzan awan, Secretary Irrigation Syed jamal Shah, Secretary PHED Tamezuddin Khero, MD Water Board Hashim Raza Zaidi, Secretary Livestock Ghulam Hussain Memon and other concerned engineers.

The meeting was told that 12 RO plants are installed in Keamari Town and six in Lyari Town. The water requirement of per person per day is 20 gallons. Lyari Town has a population of 1 million people and their requirement comes to 20 million gallon per day (GPD). The water board provides them 14 million GPD while six million gallons are provided by RO plants and still there is shortage.

Keamari Town has a population of 460,000 and their water requirement is 9.2 million GPD. The water board provides them 2.2 m GPD while the RO plants provide them seven million GPD.

The RO plants installed in Lyari and Keamari plants are designed to operate on feed water having TDS of 40,000 mg/L. The system capacity is to produce 3785 m3/day of product water from a feed of 7570 m3/day/plant of 1.0 us MGD.

It was pointed out that since inception of RO plants in 2014 they are running on O&M contract for a period from 2014-18. The contract amount of Rs868 million is per annum.

MD Water Board Hashim Raza Zaidi briefing the meeting about Grid Station RO Plant said that in Lyari area there is raw water shortage because the underwater TDS level is higher than the designed limit of 35,000 to 40,000 ppm while the available TDS has been recorded at 65,000 to 75,000 ppm.

He added that for catering this problem new shallow bores upto 100 ft are being made in Lyari Nasddi intake system. At present, 100,000 gallons to 150,000 gallon raw water has been taken for tjis RO plant and producing product water upto 35,000 to 40,000 gallons for minimizing the product water shortage. On this the chief minister directed him to develop new raw water intake system in coordination with RO plant.

He added that the Ahmed Shah Bukhari RO plant of one million gallon is producing more than 30 percent product. He added that there was requirement of system upgradation and increase the number of bores in order to enhance the product water quantum. The MD water board also said that the other plants at Lyari are alos facing almost the same problems. The MD in his report also told the chief minister that the RO plants of Keamari are also functioning at 30 percent production.

The chief minister directed the water board to develop new intake system from sea and then upgrade the plant so that maximum production could be extracted. He said that the RO plants of Sikanadarabad, Wazir Mension and Kamela where TDS is above design limit. Their sites should be shifted to another location. He also directed MD water board to enhance skilled labour at RO project for better performance.

Syed Murad Ali Shah directed the water board to prepare a detailed recommendation paper and submit the same for approval through the local government minister. “I want to provide water to the people of the people of water-starved areas of the city,” he said.